As the threat of Zika continues to grow, Rubio read a constituent letter from Wendy in Hollywood, Florida, and responded to her concerns about her pregnant daughter living in South Florida during the summer months.

“[T]his is an important issue and, in fact, I’ve been working on it now for weeks, and I can report to you that this week, the Senate passed $1.1 billion to deal with the Zika virus,” Rubio responded. “This is money that’s going to go to a number of things. Number one: helping to find a vaccine. We’re actually pretty close to a vaccine, which could make all of this irrelevant, or go away. Number two is to provide more funds to local government so they can do more to mitigate the threat of mosquitos. Number three is public awareness.‎

“I agree with you, this is an urgent matter, we’ll continue to work on it,” Rubio added.‎ "I’m glad that we’ve made some progress in the Senate, we have to get the House now to vote on an additional amount and hopefully we can get ahead of this before it becomes a crisis.”

View Rubio’s full YouTube response here. For television stations interested in airing today’s response, a broadcast quality video is available here.

Rubio encourages constituents to continue writing letters and sharing their concerns via his official website, rubio.senate.gov.

Just yesterday, Rubio issued a statement regarding the announcement by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that ‎157 pregnant women in the U.S. and another 122 in U.S. territories have shown signs of infection from the Zika virus. In the statement he said, "I hope this will be the wake-up call to Congress that finally prompts it to get serious and fully deal with the Zika virus. ‎Knowing that there are at least 279 pregnant women in the U.S. with likely Zika virus infections means we also have at least 279 unborn children at risk of microcephaly, and we should be doing all we can to save these human beings. Sadly, this number is only going to grow as we get into the real mosquito season. It's a mistake for Congress to try to deal with Zika on the cheap.”‎